Statistical Significance of Minimum of the Order Parameter Fluctuations of Seismicity Before Major Earthquakes in Japan

N. V. Sarlis, E. S. Skordas, S. R.G. Christopoulos, P. A. Varotsos

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In a previous publication, the seismicity of Japan from 1 January 1984 to 11 March 2011 (the time of the (Formula presented.) Tohoku earthquake occurrence) has been analyzed in a time domain called natural time (Formula presented.) The order parameter of seismicity in this time domain is the variance of (Formula presented.) weighted for normalized energy of each earthquake. It was found that the fluctuations of the order parameter of seismicity exhibit 15 distinct minima—deeper than a certain threshold—1 to around 3 months before the occurrence of large earthquakes that occurred in Japan during 1984–2011. Six (out of 15) of these minima were followed by all the shallow earthquakes of magnitude 7.6 or larger during the whole period studied. Here, we show that the probability to achieve the latter result by chance is of the order of (Formula presented.). This conclusion is strengthened by employing also the receiver operating characteristics technique.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)165-172
Number of pages8
JournalPure and Applied Geophysics
Volume173
Issue number1
Early online date17 Sep 2014
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2016
Externally publishedYes

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